Science Fiction for Friday

*thinking it's about time for some more sci-fi -- or would ya'll rather have fantasy? let me know.*

This can't be happening.
I told myself that every minute of every day. I couldn't be stuck in a Coreship cell with Tarika Trevis, the most dangerous criminal in the galaxy. I couldn't have gotten caught using the Equilibrium Complex. I couldn't be without Karelei ... it was an impossibly impossible impossibility.
Tarika stared at me with her creepily colorless eyes as I paced the floor of the tiny cell. The stark, glowing walls were beginning to whirl around me.

"They all do that," she informed me.
"Do what?"
"Pace. It never does any good."
I kept at it, just to prove her wrong. She was in front of me an instant later, blocking my path with an expression like stone. I jumped back into my corner. My back struck the wall, jarring all the air out of me. Ever since that dratted laser got me, all my Equilibrium was out the window.
"I can heal that," Tarika growled again, crouching next to me.
I curled into myself, the laserburn stinging like fire. "Leave me alone."

The door slid open.

Tarika jumped to her feet, fists clenched. I glanced up, deliberately keeping my hair in front of my eyes. Two guards in red uniforms cocked green Fighters at Tarika's head. "Not you," one rasped, eyes glinting behind his purple eyeband. "The kid."
"I still qualify as a kid," Tarika protested. I wondered for the first time how old she really was behind that hard face and jagged black hairstyle.
The second guard shoved her into the opposite corner and stood over her with his gun aimed at her heart. The other beckoned to me. I staggered to my feet, swaying with the barely perceptible roll of the ship.

“Arely!” Tarika cried, sitting up. “Aim for the blue, and look out for the –”
“Shut up,” said her guard. I just saw the handle of the gun impact her head as the door slipped closed again. I shouldn’t have been able to hear her cry of pain through the soundproof walls, but I did anyway.
I also heard the metallic buzz of Restraints as they settled around my wrists and saw the orange glow in front of my eyes as they confined my vision as well. The guard’s thick fingers dug into my upper arm, and I stumbled beside him along a long, curving hall.

The Restraints did not dissipate until it was completely dark around me. Something weighed my hands down. I glanced at it, but didn’t see anything so I groped with my fingers instead. My thumb hit something. A green Fighter laser streaked across the room, the low warble bouncing off wide, high walls and a star-strewn roof, illumined for an instant in brilliant colored light. I cocked the lasergun in my hand, ready to shoot at whatever attacked me. I’d heard of this.

That was the reason cold fear pooled in my stomach.

A blue light stabbed at my eyes from the left. I whirled to meet it, but it vanished. Something slammed into the back of my neck. I smelled burnt hair as I fell to the ground. The gun skittered out of my reach. Gasping, I rolled onto my back, but whatever had hit me was cloaked by darkness, smothering, concealing darkness.
Setting my teeth, I felt the back of my neck. Something warm trickled onto my hand. I jerked my hand away and automatically tried to look at my fingers to assess the damage, but the dark fell like a blanket before my eyes.

Cold laughter echoed to my right. Two points of blue light stared at me. I felt my own eyes grow wide. Every bit of warmth in my body seeped into the floor. My hands twitched. I reached for where I thought the gun would be.

Nothing.